There has been a general typecasting of Liam Neeson ever since a certain action movie came out in 2008.  Taken reshaped Neeson’s career, taking the once acclaimed dramatic actor and turning him into an action star.  One could even say Taken started a trend for all actors, creating the trope of older stars coming back for new action movies.  Neeson’s filmography has been very similar over the last few years, with movies like A-Team, Taken 2, and Non Stop, so I expected this new movie to be of a similar mold.  Fortunately, I was quite wrong.

A Walk Among the Tombstones follows cop-turned-private-investigator Matt Scudder, an ex-alcoholic working in 1999.  Neeson is hired by a drug trafficker, whose wife was kidnapped and brutally murdered by a pair of psychopathic killers.  And saying anything else would be too revealing.  So, hard to believe as it may be, this movie is not a shoot-em-up action fest, but a crime thriller.  Neeson is not a killing machine, but an intelligent and dramatic investigator, using his skills as a police officer to solve a serious crime.

Not only is the movie written much differently than most modern Neeson films, but its tone is far removed from his recent fare.  This movie is dark, with a few genuinely freighting scenes and some scary imagery.  Dark crime thrillers are pretty hard to come by nowadays, and its really refreshing to see one come around that is as well made as this.  The acting is far better than I have seen out if recent Neeson movies, with some good performances from actors I have never seen on screen before.  Especially good is young actor named Astro, who played a homeless TJ.  Good child actors are hard to come by, and Astro delivers a good performance as a character who isn’t too scared to stick his neck out for Scudder.

And that’s about it.  The film is nicely minimalistic; its not nearly as loud and in-your-face as a lot of other movies are.  If you like thrillers, and are emotionally prepared for a bit of dark material, I would check it out.